I am not going to take a side. While I don’t like government, many protesters are fascists, and extreme nationalists. And of course, the protests started because people were unhappy that the government choose to side with one imperial power (Russia), instead of another (the EU). Neither option is one that I like (though the EU appears nicer than Russia).

A French minister said sanctions would target those who started the violence. Others in the “West” have also talked about sanctions.

Where were/are the sanctions against the British (many examples, including riots in 2011)? Where where the sanctions against other governments responding with violence against protesters? No, in the “West”, government violence is lawful.

Once again, we see the West’s hypocrisy. The Ukrainian government is on the wrong side, the West condemns the government, and not the protesters, despite video of protesters preparing Molotov cocktails. If this was happening in a Western country, it would be the protesters being condemned.

The solution, as always, is to do away with the lot…

—–

A month later, and Russia has out and out annexed Crimea after a referendum of the population there supported the idea. The hypocrisy continues. Russia is all for places have referendum and such when it supports them, but not when it comes to parts of Russia itself (e.g. Chechnya). (Similarly, much of the west is the same, I doubt the USA would allow a referendum in southern California for joining Mexico, or becoming independent.)

My question is, how long has the Russian government been planning this? They didn’t want to lose their warm-water port. But the lease was until ~2040. But Ukraine looked likely to join the EU (and subsequently NATO) well before then. Russia was worried, but now isn’t nearly as worried. No one is going to go to war with Russia over Crimea (except, perhaps, Ukraine). And so Russia gets what they want, and the world will forget it all within a year or two.

——

As always, fuck the government, fuck war (no war but the class war), fuck nationalism, fuck patriotism, fuck capitalism,

This was going to be a well thought out and researched post. But in the end, it’s not. The conclusion is that the EU has always been at war. But it’s a class war.

This is a case where you could actually argue that, yes, the EU has helped peace in Europe. And it is certainly the case that the EU is not the worst recipient in the prize’s history, but it is certainly not the best.

This also does not devalue the Peace Prize in anyway either. After all, the prize was already considered basically worthless by anyone paying attention. Let’s quickly look at two of the recent recipients: Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”% – given the prize for not being Bush, but still continued Bush’s wars; Gore “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change” % – huh huh. Many of the other recent recipients are also not so worth.
A quick look at previous years has some more outragous names, including Kissinger, the UN(!) and others that you have to wonder, “what’s that person got to do with peace” or “yes they’ve done some good stuff, but it’s not actually related to peace exactly is it…”.

But let’s look at the EU in more detail. It’s prevented war between it’s members in a similar (and slightly more successful) way that NATO has. It has, however, not prevented wars and fighting between its members and other nations (e.g. Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, Yugoslavia and former Yugoslavia in the 1990s).
But more importantly for this website, it’s a club of the ruling class. The EU is a representative of the global capitalist system which conducts class war everyday of every year. Recent bailouts of banks, and continual anti-union activities in certain countries, and all the agreements (large parts of Schengan for example) to make it even easier for policing to move across borders, but not “criminals” are examples of this.

Moreover the EU is one of the largest weapons producers and exporters in the world. Hardly a peaceful sort of thing to do. It’s trade policies are aggressive. Etc. etc.

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